Have you heard about Autodesk's Impression? Impression is in its second year, or second release. Autodesk named it Impression 2. Very creative name. Well, the first release (Impression 1) was available to anyone willing to pay about $500 per license. Now Autodesk has changed who can have it and how they get it. Impression is now only available as a FREE download for members of Autodesk's subscription services. If you buy a program without the subscriptions service you can no get Impression. Sorry. Autodesk has done this to sweeten the pot of Subscription.
Good news. If you have a subscription with Autodesk, then all you have to do is log on to Autodesk's subscription website, go to your download page and download Impression. You get one license of Impression for every subscription license you have.
So what does this mean? It means that you can now start using Impression. What is Impression? It is a digital illustration software. It can create digital renderings (not 3D realistic renderings) that have a hand drawn look to them. Take a look at the image on the side. I made this with Impression. I traced over a photo of the Chicago Skyline. That is supposed to be the Sears Tower by the way.
The second image is of a generic movie house. As you can see, there are many different ways to use Impression and many different methods to use too. The first image was drawn completely in Impression. The second image was drawn in AutoCAD and imported into Impression where it was rendered. These are not great works of art, but many people have created great looking images.CAD-a-Blog is going to start posting tips and tricks about Impression too, especially since there isn't much about it on the internet yet and now it is free. Many more users will now have it available to use and will want to take advantage of it, especially since it is free.
So, keep coming back to CAD-a-Blog to learn more about Impression. Until I get more posts about it, check out my articles on Impression in AUGI World magazines September of 2007.
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Happy CADDING (and rendering!)
